Abstract
•A novel training method for conditioning automatic inhibition was established.•The generalizability of the training program was demonstrated using the Stroop task.•Specificity of conditioning automatic inhibition was demonstrated.•The effects of the CAIT training were maintained for at least a few hours.•Our findings open new clinical opportunities for augmenting existing treatments.
There is growing interest in methods for conditioning automatic inhibition with specific stimuli and the potential clinical implications of these methods. For example, OCD patients were shown to benefit from a computerized training program which aimed to create an association between OCD-related cues and stopping behaviors. In the current study, we aimed to investigate the ability to condition inhibition to specific stimuli and whether such conditioning can be generalized between tasks to last over time. Participants completed 6 training sessions using a novel version of the stop-signal task, the ‘conditioning automatic inhibition task’ (CAIT), over a 48 -h period, in which one randomly chosen color patch was associated with inhibition. The classic Stroop task was administered before and after the CAIT training. Results yielded smaller congruency and interference effects in the Stroop task after training, but only for the color that was associated with stopping. These results demonstrate the effect of the CAIT onto one specific stimulus, and that the effect generalized between the training and testing tasks. This provides novel evidence that the CAIT can be used to facilitate faster recruitment of inhibitory resources for a specific trained stimulus, which might later help resolve cognitive conflicts that require inhibition and might also have important clinical implications.